Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down • Hacker News Board

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#41

Post by blintzing » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:40 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #30

blintzing wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it funny that we're even having this conversation? That Google can offer two products, differentiated by a single character (Google+ Photos and Google Photos), with few obvious indicators as to which I should use? It's confusing to me, but trying to explain it to my mom is absolutely impossible. I wonder whether the average user even knows there's a difference between the two. It's a perfect example of unnecess…

> Isn't it funny that we're even having this conversation? That Google can offer two products, differentiated by a single character (Google+ Photos and Google Photos), with few obvious indicators as to which I should use? Google Photos was announced May 2015, explicitly as the future of what had been Google+ Photos. It has been clear since then that that's what would be supported going forward, and then Google+ Photo…

How many grandmas (or even casual Google users) knew that though? Do they read Google's blog?

(Also, not to be picky, but I see no mention of Google+ Photos (let alone its status as "deprecated legacy") on the announcement blog post: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/picture-this-fresh-ap...)

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#42

Post by sosborn » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:42 PM UTC

tdicola wrote: post #34

jonursenbach wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Reader was in maintenance mode for years, and companies that appeared when it disappeared have gone above and beyond what they offered. See: Feedly.com

Feedly has improved a lot but it still doesn't display feeds as densely as Reader did and I feel a lot slower getting through a lot of feeds. Searching for articles was fantastic on Google Reader, but with Feedly it never works. Maybe I need to pay to enable search? Ultimately search 'just worked' on Google Reader and never works for me on Feedly. If Reader was in maintenance mode then that's even worse to have kille…

> it didn't need new features or major work

That was my favorite part about it. It just worked.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#43

Post by icefox » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:45 PM UTC

zatkin wrote: post #40

>"They already made us abandon our "picasaweb" stuff for Google+ Photos. Killing off Google+ Photos sends the clear message "do not rely on Google for your photo storage needs". Not that shuffling gigabytes of photos around every couple of years isn't fun but, well, it isn't fun." From the TechCrunch comments.

Having just spend part of a week moving off of Google code and now this I am beginning to seriously question my choice to use gmail for my domain email. As someone that uses blogger we didn't have a choice and all photos hosted on blogger got moved to the old picasa years ago and got "upgraded" several times. I wonder what the implications are for this. Will I have to fix all my blog entries? Probably easier to just move off of Blogger while I am at it :(

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#44

Post by micampe » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:45 PM UTC

jlebar wrote: post #16

serve_yay wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of unread Facebook messages I have is not printed on 30% of all the web pages I visit. This is what I find so irritating about Google+, it's everywhere it doesn't need to be. Comparisons to things like Twitter and FB fall flat for this reason.

I'm not excusing this -- it annoys me too -- but you can set up a user style [1] to hide this element. [1] e.g. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/stylish/

I did that for a while to hide the random “notifications” from people I had never heard about that appeared every other day on google.com. I had to change the custom style so many times because they changed the ids/classes every other week that now I just logged out of my Google account to not see it.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#45

Post by icefox » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:46 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #24

c5karl wrote: post #15

How much longer before they kill Picasa and Picasaweb, which just provide a different UI (and different editing software) for the same archive of photos?

I have never seen Picasa used for anything but spam. Can't think of anyone I know who actually uses it properly.

All blogger images by default get hosted there (or in the same backend?).

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#46

Post by gcb0 » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:46 PM UTC

wow. i have lots and lots of pictures, mostly hosted to share on forums, that were uploaded all the way back on picasa.

then picasaweb. then google photo web. or something. photos still there.

then i was forced to join google+ to continue uploading/editing/sharing. And i think it became google+ photos. or google photos as everyone called it. i can still see all the pictures i uploaded to picasa showing as my pictures on my plus profile.

and now, i have no clue what they mean with this announcement. will i have to migrate? am i already on the right photos? will i lose things if i do not migrate?

i have backups so i can't care less. what worries me A LOT is that those photos are linked on all short of forums and people will not find the information i produced if the links dies.

Thanks for "organizing the world information", google.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#47

Post by jpatokal » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:48 PM UTC

blintzing wrote: post #6

jeffgreco wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure they aren't. All of my Google+ photos wound up in Google Photos without any work on my part, other than maybe actually accessing photos.google.com.

Isn't it funny that we're even having this conversation? That Google can offer two products, differentiated by a single character (Google+ Photos and Google Photos), with few obvious indicators as to which I should use? It's confusing to me, but trying to explain it to my mom is absolutely impossible. I wonder whether the average user even knows there's a difference between the two. It's a perfect example of unnecess…

For the average user, there is no difference, all that's happening is that "Google* Photos" is moving to a new domain and getting a bit of a facelift.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#48

Post by jpatokal » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:49 PM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #14

How many photo products has Google had? Have any of them been successful?

Google Photos is the default home of your pictures if you have an Android phone, so yes, it's actually pretty darn successful.

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#49

Post by eCa » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:51 PM UTC

I have passed the point where I would use any service Google launches, where they keep data I want to keep; and it's not because of Snowden.

They are acting like they are a bunch of startup teams constantly getting aqui-hired, with services getting changed, merged or canceled. I couldn't possibly recommend any of their services[1] to non-technical people, at any time something will stop working.

I'm not a wall to throw things at to see what sticks.

[1] Beyond search, of course

Re: Google+ Photos Is Shutting Down

#50

Post by mvgoogler » Mon, Jul 20, 2015, 11:52 PM UTC

zatkin wrote: post #40

>"They already made us abandon our "picasaweb" stuff for Google+ Photos. Killing off Google+ Photos sends the clear message "do not rely on Google for your photo storage needs". Not that shuffling gigabytes of photos around every couple of years isn't fun but, well, it isn't fun." From the TechCrunch comments.

I work on the backend for Google Photos (and Google+ Photos and Picasaweb).

Picasaweb, Google+ Photos and Google Photos all store the photos in the same place.

There was never any need to "shuffle gigabytes of photos" when moving from picasaweb to G+ Photos and there won't be any needed to move from G+ Photos to Google Photos.

I don't see howany of that adds up to "do not rely on Google for your photo storage needs".